Catholic Social Teaching and Pope Francis on Free Markets and Sustainability

The purpose of this article is to provide professors and students in Jesuit business schools with the information necessary to justify and use ten principles that continue the distincively Jesuit approach to business and economics. Jesuits are not against free markets, private property, microeconomc and macroeconomic anaysis, or the application of these tenets within the socio-economic milieu, for they actively contributed to their development. 

So what really is distinctive about a Jesuit approach to business and economics? In a phrase, Jesuits attempt to integrate principles of social justice and sustainability with free market economic analysis that allows for optimal productivity, just distribtions of goods, a preferential option for the poor, and social inclustion both nationally and internationally. They draw from ten major principles of natural law ethics and Catholic Social Teaching which are all justifiable through rational-empirical method without making recourse to Catholic or Christain revelation.